L.A. Officers Were Building Case Against Premium Chief

Detectives investigating the slaying of a Hollywood recording studio executive said Thursday they were “tightening the noose” on the president of a Huntington Beach finance company when their prime suspect died April 6.

Tips and financial records were leading detectives straight to businessman Coleman Allen, 57, as the mastermind behind the January shooting death of Barry J. Skolnick, police said Thursday.

“When we heard he was dead we were surprised and then it sunk in: What a tragedy,” Los Angeles Det. Roseanne Parino said of Allen’s death by natural causes. “What a shame he died and didn’t have to pay the price.”

LAPD investigators, however, don’t believe Allen actually pulled the trigger in Skolnick’s death. At a news conference Thursday, police announced a reward and implored Allen’s former associates and borrowers to step forward with information on the shooter, suspected to be a hired gun.

“He’s dead, he’s not going to hurt anyone anymore,” Det. Rick Jackson said. “People out there have information, we’re sure of that, and we want to hear from them.”

Police offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who shot Skolnick in the head as he walked through the Sunset Boulevard parking garage of Hollywood Recording Services on Jan. 30.

A grainy image of a light-colored Chevrolet Astro, captured by a garage camera in the moments before and after Skolnick’s death, was made public Thursday. Detectives suspect the late-model minivan was driven by the shooter.

Skolnick, 30, was manager of Hollywood Recording and had been the company’s owner before Allen took over in 1994. Skolnick owed Allen’s finance company, Premium Commercial Services Corp., more than $900,000, according to court records.

After Allen took over Skolnick’s business, the studio bought a $2.5-million life insurance policy on Skolnick that police said Thursday was the likely motive for the studio executive’s slaying.

The policy named Allen’s Hollywood Recording as the sole beneficiary. The proceeds from that policy now sit in an interest-bearing account awaiting the final determination of the Skolnick investigation, LAPD Det. Dennis Kilcoyne said Thursday.

Even if police can prove Allen engineered Skolnick’s death, investigators said, the insurance money still might end up in the hands of Hollywood Recording, a company now run by Allen’s widow, Barbara Dale Allen.

“Corporations can’t commit a crime,” Kilcoyne said. “They may get the money no matter what happened, as far as I can see. It’s crazy.”

Police said that Barbara Allen and company officials have cooperated with the ongoing investigation and there is no evidence that any current member of the company committed a crime.

Detectives declined to elaborate on the evidence pointing to Allen, but they marveled at the ever-widening scope of the case involving Premium Commercial, a firm that made loans to fledgling and risky businesses.

At least seven agencies are investigating Allen and Premium Commercial in connection with a series of violent crimes, including the 1995 slaying of a Fountain Valley flight attendant who apparently was mistakenly the victim of a contract hit.

The LAPD is reviewing two more deaths--in addition to the Skolnick murder--for potential connections, Parino said. She declined to elaborate, saying those inquiries are still in early stages.

Orange County authorities already have charged two suspected hit men--small business owners Leonard Owen Mundy and Paul Gordon Alleyne--in shootings that have been linked to Premium Commercial.

Both men were in debt to Premium Commercial and are being considered as suspects in the Skolnick slaying, police said Thursday.

Mundy and Alleyne had both visited the offices of Hollywood Recording, Jackson revealed Thursday, and will be questioned further about Skolnick’s death.

Mundy, a Los Angeles electrician who had done wiring work at the studio, was charged last week with the murder of Fountain Valley flight attendant Jane Carver, shot last year while returning home from jogging.

Police suspect that the killing was a botched hit aimed at another woman who lived nearby. The woman believed to have been the hit man’s target, Margaret Wengert, had filed a lawsuit three days before the Carver shooting accusing Premium Commercial of strong-arming her into signing over her Fountain Valley house to cover her husband’s $400,000 debt.

Wengert’s husband, financial investigator James Wengert, survived a gunshot wound to the face in April near the couple’s current home in San Clemente. Alleyne, owner of an auto parts business in Los Angeles, was charged in that attack.

The police investigation into Wengert’s shooting led detectives to Premium Commercial and later to Mundy.

It was not the first time Allen was linked to violence against a borrower. He was sentenced to three years’ probation last year after pleading no contest to a charge of bashing a businessman with a pipe wrench at a meeting in Signal Hill.

Detectives say that Allen had no apparent ties to any larger organized crime groups and that they suspect he began soliciting hit men in September or October to kill Skolnick.

Allen, of Tarzana, died last month of heart disease and hypertension, according to the Los Angeles county coroner.

The Baltimore native’s death prevented LAPD detectives from following through in compiling their case in the Skolnick slaying, Kilcoyne said.

“We approached him very low key, we did not want to tip our hand,” Kilcoyne said of his interviews with Allen. The detectives were “approaching kind of through the back door . . . we planted seeds of information in his head,” Kilcoyne said.

Allen was courteous but not forthcoming in his exchanges with detectives, who gave him the impression they were “clueless” about his suspected role, police said. The investigators say now that they were methodically closing in on the businessman.

“He was friendly to us, but obviously he wasn’t very friendly to others,” Kilcoyne said. The detective said he was “dumbfounded” when a member of Skolnick’s family called to say Allen had died.

When asked if the investigation might have aggravated Allen’s heart condition, Kilcoyne chuckled. “We can’t take credit for that, no.”

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Times staff writer Emi Endo contributed to this report.